Selected Correspondence Peter

I noticed you made a comment on the following post to the list, and I thought I’d put my two bob in –

‘Killing while protecting one’s own body from death at the hands of another is a violation. Whether or not any justification seems apparent, the violation exists.

(Long pause.) Because you believe that physical self-defence is the only way to counter such a situation then you will say, ‘If I am attacked by another person, are you telling me that I cannot aggressively counter his obvious intent to destroy me?’ Not at all. You could counter such an attack in several ways that do not involve killing. You would not be in such a hypothetical situation to begin with unless violent thoughts of your own, faced or unfaced, had attracted it to you.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J.Roberts

I find it curious that these words of wisdom about physical self-defence supposedly come from a disembodied entity. As such, I would say that an ethereal entity without a physical body would be the least qualified to offer gratuitous moral advice to we corporeal earthly humans.

Personally, I enjoy being here and have no problem, should the need arise, in aggressively countering another’s obvious intent to destroy me. Obviously I would do all that was reasonable to avoid being in the situation in the first place, or get out of it with all the cunning I could muster, but if all else fails, to lay down and die for a moral principle is clearly silly.

The last platitude offered is the usual spiritual karmic nonsense that is easily dismissed by considering the ‘violent thoughts’ of the toddlers killed in the Oklahoma bombing, those villagers killed in the Lockerby plane crash, the school children shot at Columbine, the children hacked to pieces in Rwanda, etc.

All religious/ spiritual wisdom, no matter what its source, is a minefield of unliveable morals and pious ethics, aimed solely at crippling, controlling and burdening wayward souls with guilt and shame.

Well, I’ve blown it now – I’m now commenting on the writings of an imaginary disembodied entity – a bit like commenting on the words and actions of the Son of God in the Christian Bible or the Buddha who was an elephant in a previous life.

It’s a funny world ...

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Yes, unless such a one was ‘God in human form’. That is essentially the Christian myth. So there is one (ie., Jesus, Seth, etc.) who knows all about being a human but at the same time is ‘beyond’ all that, having transcended it, and can supposedly guide us mere mortals. Now please note, I am not arguing from this position. I merely found the excerpted quotation interesting as I have struggled to understand how to deal with violence.

I found the business of delving back into Eastern spiritual teachings, meta-physical sciences, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc. and finding the loop holes, so top speak, a very freeing experience. Digging beneath what is seemingly being said and finding the core argument, theory, concept or belief that underpins and substantiates what has passed as the great, profound and Sacred truths of the Human Condition is very daunting but it is the only way to actually free oneself of the Human Condition. Facts must replace beliefs for facts are actual but beliefs shackle ‘me’ to the Human Condition and keep ‘me’, the believer, in existence. This process of investigation is exactly why we actualists do tend to be a wordy lot and interested in exploring all of the aspects of the Human Condition.

In a recent post, No 8 wrote –

But the information is fascinating. Seth is no advocate of irresponsibility; he declares you are absolutely responsible for every minuscule event that ever happens to you. The archives of every word he spoke have been stored at Yale University and physicists are studying his probability theory which you can read about in a book titled Bridging Science and Spirituality. ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

In reply, you wrote –

‘I’ll pass No 8, although I did put my foot in my mouth in a post to Gary entitled ‘disembodied morals’.’

It’s a rather big foot, Peter, and I was wondering if you might like to reply. I called it the ‘sticking point’, because I feel there is a point that most of us get to when we are severely challenged and up against something that refuses to budge. Faced with an adversary who is intent on putting an end to your life at the point of a gun or some other equally potent weapon, it is interesting to speculate as to whether one would respond instinctually with a ‘kill or be killed’ mentality or whether something else would happen, something more akin to intelligence and common sense. Of course, I may be neglecting to recognize that common sense might dictate speedily dispatching the onerous adversary with a well placed shot. A kind of ‘putting him out of his misery’, as it were.

If you would care to respond, you might comment on whether or not you were caught unawares when you responded in that way by saying ‘aggressively’. It was a rather revealing remark, as I think we are all in that boat, unless of course we are in Actual Freedom.

It looks as though we have a crossed-post situation where I have answered most of the points you raised by answering your first post on the subject. At the moment I am quite busy working so I tend to be slow in my responses if the inbox gets full. I also like to respond in reasonable detail to questions raised which was another reason that I was attempting to pass on the longish piece of Sethism that No 8 posted, but it looks as though my attempt failed. You quoted No 8 –

‘Seth is no advocate of irresponsibility; he declares you are absolutely responsible for every minuscule event that ever happens to you.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

Common to most spiritual/ religious teachings is the moral principle that everyone is responsible for their actions, whereas one only has to take a clear-eyed look at the sacred teachings to discover that this is not so in fact.

In monotheist religions the issue is very clear. There is one God only, usually a creator God, and everyone is ultimately judged by this Big Daddy who offers the carrot of a heavenly after-life, or the stick of a hellish after-life.

This threat of Divine punishment and the promise of Divine reward ultimately means that everyone is responsible only to God for his or her actions and to no-one else. Thus a mythical God becomes one’s ultimate authority and the beleaguered believers dance to the tune of their God as well as His or Her earthly representatives – the Popes, Bishops, priests, Gurus and God-men, pundits, teachers, etc. When my God is ‘The one and only God’ it means that all other Gods are impostors, fakes and competitors, and those who follow other Gods are therefore non-believers, heathens or barbarians.

This battle of the ‘I-am-the-one-and-only’ type Gods has meant that millions upon millions upon millions of impassioned believers have attacked, slaughtered, maimed, killed and tortured other human beings in thousands upon thousands of pogroms, missions, retributions cleansings, wars and crusades, that have gone on for at least 3,500 years of recorded history. This senseless violence, spawned of religious belief, is still on-going with no sign of abating as all the prayers for peace on earth to these self-same mythical Gods have curiously gone unanswered.

In the monotheist system violence and killing is not only condoned as in ‘I’m fighting for God’ or ‘I lay down my life for God’ but it is Glorified in that the very action of killing, or being killed, ‘for God’s sake’ is a guarantee of a glorious redemption and salvation for one’s immortal soul.

This action of deliberately surrendering one’s responsibility is predicated on believing in the ancient ignorant beliefs and superstitions of good and evil spirits, Forces or Beings as the underlying cause of the animal-instinctual savage and tender passions in operation in human beings. As such, to hold any skerrick of belief in any of the ‘I-am-the-one-and-only’ type Gods – by whatever name – is to renounce responsibility for one’s actions and ignore the fact that every flesh and blood human is automatically driven by instinctual animal passions. These passions arise from a genetically-encoded very crude program instilled by ‘blind’ nature purely in order to ensure the survival of the strongest (i.e. most brutish) of the species. Animal ‘evolution’ in action is not a pretty business ...

Last century, when the last world war after the ‘War to end all Wars’ finished and yet another (Cold) War developed with each side playing a game called MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – many people who were desperate for peace on earth turned their backs on Western Religion and adopted Eastern ‘spirituality’ with open-hearts and lofty expectations. Given that any belief demands faith, trust, hope and unquestioning agreement, none bothered to stop and investigate the basic tenets of this ‘spiritual movement’ – Eastern religion and philosophy. The core belief that underpins Eastern religion and philosophy is that ‘who-one-truly-is’ is spirit only and one is most definitely not the body. To sustain this belief one needs to deny the body and its functions, as in ‘I am not the body, I am not the mind’, etc. This belief, if fully indulged, can lead to a state of solipsism:

‘the view or theory that only the self really exists or can be known’ Oxford Dictionary

– which is the most extreme form of denial, pathological dissociation. This denial represents an abdication of any and all actions that ‘the body’ and ‘the mind’ happen to do for they are not ‘me’, they are but vessels for ‘my’ earthly journey or even ethereal manifestations of the real, substantive ‘Me’. This core belief in the East is most graphically seen in the teachings of Ramesh Balsekar and the wisdom and culture of Zen Buddhism.

Which reminds me, it was when Jane Roberts began her intense contemplation of the universe as idea construction that Seth, the so called personality energy essence, made its entrance, from his discarnate multidimensional view point, (don’t laugh :-)) and began explaining (in the distorted terms that our linear and limited minds could understand) how beliefs create what Richard would call the ‘real world’ of the human condition and conditioning. Beliefs which Seth says are dispensed with when a human being makes certain realizations. But he also says ...<Snipped>

I do like to write to people who are interested in how to become actually free of malice and sorrow for this is the only way we human beings can stop fighting and feuding with each other – the only way we can put an end to all the rapes and murders, tortures and bloodshed, child abuse and persecution, conflict and wars. Given that this empirical approach to bringing an end to human malice and sorrow is so radically new, this writing often involves a lot of demolishing of Bronze Age spirit-ual perceptions and beliefs of good and evil spirits, loving beings and hateful beings, after-lives and other-worlds, etc. which people still espouse as being the ‘Truth’ about human existence on earth. Thus I inevitably find myself writing to passionate believers, the firmly convinced and even the fully deluded. Often, in order to justify or defend their beliefs, the stout defenders of the status quo will quote the supposedly truth-full teachings of long dead holy men, despite the fact that there is considerable doubt as to whether these holy men really existed as flesh and blood human beings. However, I do draw the line, particularly on this list, as to making any comment on the so-called ‘Wisdom’ of a disembodied entity who has no existence other than in the fertile and passionate imagination of ‘his’ earthly channeller ... and of those who believe her story.

In my spiritual days, I once knew a woman who channelled a disembodied entity and she drew large crowds to meetings and a good clientele for private sessions. When she split up from her manager-boyfriend, the entity left as well, leaving her doubly mystified and saddened. I attempted to fill the gap in the local spiritual community by putting up posters, complete with pictures, offering ‘Garden Gnome Channelling’ but had no success.

However I did better when, some time later, I placed an advertisement in the local spiritual newsletter offering sessions in ‘Capology – the Ancient Tibetan Art of Knee-cap Reading’. The advertisement described that the knees are a critical junction-point for the flow of ‘Quong energy’. I also offered half price to pensioners and amputees! I cheekily gave the telephone number of the local Concerned Christians, a cult-busting group, which had occasionally given Eastern spiritual people a hard time. I thought nothing more of it until the editor of the newsletter bailed me up one day to tell me that the Concerned Christians had rung up to complain that they had had so many phone calls wanting to book sessions.

Which made me think, even then, that people will believe anything. It just took me a while to admit to the fact that I was as gullible as everyone else.

Of all the brilliant schools of thought I have looked into, (Richard’s the most recent among them) and I discovered an astonishing number all replete in their tidy logic, Seth’s had the most profound effect on my life. Here I found no denying or avoiding honest investigation into the human condition either, except that Seth left me with no alternative not even a third one.

The only reason I dared to challenge the most sacred of all feelings (love) was that I found it did not work, it always came hand-in-glove with its savage dark side and ... I wanted something better. I’ve found it.

Here is Seth’s take on that dark side and how it ‘works’; from ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ (1974)

‘It is not that those emotions are opposites. It is that they are different aspects, and experienced differently.’

‘Hate is akin to love, for the hater is attracted to the object of his hatred by deep bonds. It can also be a method of communication, but it is never a steady constant state, and will automatically change if not tampered with.

If you believe that hate is wrong and evil, and then find yourself hating someone, you may try to inhibit the emotion or turn it against yourself – raging against yourself rather than another. On the other hand you may try to pretend the feeling out of existence, in which case you dam up that massive energy and cannot use it for other purposes. In its natural state, hatred has a powerful rousing characteristic that initiates change and action. Regardless of what you have been told, hatred does not initiate strong violence. As covered earlier in this book, the outbreak of violence is the result of a built-in sense of powerlessness.

<Big Snip>

In this context is Seth’s frequent reminder that the expression of normal aggression prevents the buildup of anger into hatred.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

Obviously Seth speaks to an era of humanity not yet willing to approach the possibility of the illusion of Self. Nevertheless I found it infinitely more sensible and joyous than religious spirituality.

Do you mean by ‘ more ... than religious spirituality ’ that Sethism is not a formal religion as such? A bit hard to have a photo of a spirit hanging on your wall or a cross with a spirit nailed to it on the altar. As a kid the Holy Ghost was always a big question mark for me.

Religion is defined as –

Belief in or sensing of some superhuman controlling power or powers, entitled to obedience, reverence, and worship, or in a system defining a code of living, esp. as a means to achieve spiritual or material improvement; acceptance of such belief (esp. as represented by an organized Church) as a standard of spiritual and practical life; the expression of this in worship etc. Oxford Dictionary

Methinks Sethism fits the bill and as you said Seth’s your man ... as in most ‘brilliant school of thought’.

But seriously, I find it a bit strange that your reply to my comment about my experiences was to post a long piece quoting someone else rather than post your experiences. After all, it was you who recently posted –

... we gather here on this list fully acknowledging our human tendency to fall into yet another senseless belief trap.

I must say though, that from the posts I have read from the members on this list, they too seem just as committed to finding an alternative to spirituality, as you are Peter. I would not be here if I was not fully aware of those first bases you speak of above and the futility of continuing to play those games. I think it was extremely important that Richard created a space like this. As place where open, like minded friends can pour out and expose their programming for what it is and assist each other in wiping the drive and re-programming ...

Your posting of the wisdom of the spirit called Seth contradicts your implied commitment to find an alternative to spirituality. You also state that you are ‘fully aware of those first bases [I] speak of’, the most significant of which is to question the facticity and validity of your spiritual beliefs. Despite this you post the words of others that you believe to be the truth as your reply to my posts. The problem with this is you post such a quantity that it would take me days to give a detailed reply to each of the articles posted. I recently wrote a detailed critique of a book of wisdom written by a spiritual teacher and simply do not have the interest at the moment in doing the same with the ‘channelled’ wisdom a disembodied spirit, the voice of God. I would much rather write to people about my experiences and hear of their experiences, so we can swap notes as it were. The fascinating human business of being able to safely ‘pour out and expose their programming for what it is and assist each other in wiping the drive and re-programming ...’

Yes, Seth was a red herring, and it was as predictable as tomorrow, that the sharks would start feeding. What else could one expect from cold-blooded creatures with nothing but bodily instincts and the remnants of a rudimentary intellect to guide their ravenous and rapacious appetite for survival. A grizzly sight indeed. Peace on Earth? ... my foot!

Richard’s bratty self-righteousness (so ‘cute’ No 12) has made him the laughing stock of the Krishnamurti-list too. He is the only one who doesn’t realize, he is a perfect blithering example, of how actualism fails absolutely, to communicate with and experience actual intimacy with one’s fellow man.

Given that you seem to have ‘spat the dummy’ and disappeared over the hill I did consider not answering this post, but there are others on this list who are genuinely interested in actualism, so I will pen a reply to both of you anyway.

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Actuality is far, far bigger than mere feelings or impassioned imagination for it is actual, patently palpable, infinitely varied, observably tangible, manifestly obvious, always apparent, clearly evident, eternally existing and it is happening right here and right now, under our very noses as it were.

Yes Actuality is too vast for us to consciously follow, but then, from my observations, so too is the imagination.

Given that you have yet to indicate by personal description that you have understood one iota of what actualism is about, this comment is nonsensical. It is doubly so when your version of what is actual is based on the ‘Actuality’ of a bodiless spirit – a spirit that is ethereal, that you cannot touch, feel, smell, touch, talk to, or write an e-mail to and get an answer. ‘He’, as pure spirit, who does not eat, drink, sleep, walk, sweat, bleed, fart, defecate, age or die can know nothing of actuality – that which is palpable, tangible, touchable, visible, sensually and sensately experienced.

As you said ... Seth is a red herring!

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Seth the Red Herring –

‘Your actual experience is far too vast for you to physically follow. Your particular kind of consciousness is the result of specialized focus within a particular area. You imagine it to be ‘absolute,’ in that it seems to involve an all-exclusive state that includes (or does not) your identity – as you think of I – only you give it boundaries like a kingdom. There are no such limits.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

Thus spoke a bodiless spirit who is free of the boundaries of being a flesh and blood human being on the planet and soars through the ether of the cosmos ... occasionally sending messages to those spirits still trapped on earth that ‘things are really okay and one day, you too will get to soar with me. Believe in me and one day ... after you die ... you too will get to be a disembodied ethereal spirit’.

This fantasy reminds me of that 70’s American television program called Charlie’s Angels.

Seth the Red Herring –

‘The playfulness and creativity of dreams are vastly under-rated. Children often frighten themselves on purpose through games, knowing the game’s framework all the time. The bogeyman in the garden vanishes at the sound of the supper bell. The child returns to the safe universe of milk and cookies. Dreams serve the same purpose. Fears are encountered, but the dawn breaks. The dreamer awakes for breakfast. The fears, after all, are seen as groundless. This is a reminder that not all such events are neurotic or indicative of endless future physical problems.’ ‘Jane and Joseph have a kitten. In its great exuberant physical energy it chases its own tail, scales the furniture and tires itself out. Man’s mind exuberantly plays with itself in somewhat the same fashion. In dreams it uses all those splendid energetic abilities freely, without the necessity for physical feedback, caution, or questioning. It seeks realities, giving birth to psychological patterns. It uses itself fully in mental activity in the same way that the kitten does in physical play.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

Most people never really emerge from their childhood fairy-tale world for if do they are only confronted with grim reality and soon go back ‘inside’. Some people who do escape from the security of childhood fantasy emerge reluctantly into the world only to find grim reality so horrific that they turn to the ‘adult’ dream world of believing in a creator Big-Daddy God or spirit who is looking after things. They practice retreating into an ‘inner’ sanctuary of peace and contentment, they search for the holy grail of becoming God-on-earth and they believe the pie in the sky stories of an ‘other-world’ were their soul goes after the death of their bodies.

There is now an alternative to both escapist imagination and grim reality.

Seth the Red Herring –

‘When you try to explore the psyche in deadly seriousness, it will always escape you. Your dreams can be interpreted as dramas, perhaps, but never as diagrams. By trying to bring ‘vastness of the imagination’ down to your level, you are unable to playfully enter that reality, and allow your own waking consciousness to rise into a freer kind of interpretation of events, in which energy is not bounded by space, time, or human limitations.’ ‘The Nature of Personal Reality’ Seth via J. Roberts

So No 8, you have taken Seth’s ‘vastness of the imagination’ and translated it into ‘Actuality is too vast for us to consciously follow’. Do you have nothing to say that relates to your own personal experience as a human being on this planet?

T’would make for far more interesting, and relevant, posts for us mere mortals.

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